ON WOAD, WHAT IT IS,

AND HOW MANY GENERA IT HAS,

AND ON ITS ENTIRE CULTIVA-

TION AND PREPARA-

TION.

A decorative drop cap letter D featuring floral motifs.THE ISATIS woad HERB IS, THEREFORE,
a plant resembling the leaves of the
plantain, useful and even necessary
for dyeing wools, so that they may
receive colors. Others, as the ancients
Pliny in Book 22, Chapter 1, and also
Book 20 of Natural History, Chapter 7,
and Caesar in the Gallic War, Book 5,
and among the more recent writers,
Raphael Volaterranus in Book 26, and
Cardanus in Book 8, call it by another
name, glastum woad. The common
people call it guadum woad, and it
grows abundantly in Lombardy, in the
Jülich region, and also in our own
Thuringian soil. Dioscorides, at the
end of the second book, in chapters
177 and 178...